Problem with regular expression

magic003

Hi, I am using regular expression. But I have some problems with it, look at the following code:

<HTML>
<HEAD><TITLE>Finding substring</TITLE></HEAD>
<BODY>
<?PHP
	$input = "maths 89 c++ 92 java 85 uml 80";
	ereg("[0-9]*",$input,$regs);

echo "Scores:<br>";
echo "num: " . count($regs);
for($i=0;$i<count($regs);$i++){
	echo "$regs[$i] ";
}
?>
</BODY>
</HTML>

why it always output:

Scores:
num: 1

bpat1434

Beecause ereg won't match one pattern to the whole string. And ereg returns an array with FALSE as it's only value, so when you count it, it gives you 1; when in reality it's not working. What you'd probably want is the PERL compatible function [man]preg_match_all/man. Then you'd have to change your pattern to be:

"~([0-9]*)~"

Ereg only finds whole string patterns, but preg can. So your code:

	$input = "maths 89 c++ 92 java 85 uml 80";
	preg_match_all("~([0-9]*)~",$input,$regs);

echo "Scores:<br>";
echo "num: " . count($regs);
for($i=0;$i<count($regs);$i++){
	echo "$regs[$i] ";
}

Now, it would seem you might want something a little more powerful like this:

	preg_match_all("~([a-z\+\s]*)([0-9]*)~", $input, $regs);
	array_shift($regs);

echo 'Scores:<br>';
echo 'num: '.(count($regs[0])-1).'<br>';
for($i=0; $i<count($regs[0]); $i++)
{
	if(!empty($regs[0][$i]) && !empty($regs[1][$i]))
	{
		echo $regs[0][$i].' '.$regs[1][$i].'<br>';
	}
}

which outputs:

Scores:
num: 4
maths 89
c++ 92
java 85
uml 80

magic003

Thank you very much! It is really helpful for me!